


Pride

by RosieCheeks101



Series: we're just a bunch of teenagers. we can't handle this. [5]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Battle of Hogwarts, Character Study, Gen, canon character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-04
Updated: 2015-09-04
Packaged: 2018-04-18 23:52:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4724891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RosieCheeks101/pseuds/RosieCheeks101
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mary MacDonald wasn't proud of what she'd done</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pride

_Mary MacDonald was not proud of what she'd done._  


-  


She'd been 19, still a kid really, and Marlene McKinnon was a year older and gave off an aura of invincibility. And when Marlene was around Mary felt like she couldn't be hurt. Then came the day she went to visit the McKinnons, the day she found her ex's dead body in the rubble surrounded by her own family.  


That was when she ran.  


She considered going home to her family, they were Muggles in Scotland, but the Order knew where it was she called home, and so she never saw her family again.  


She found herself in a little muggle village in Wales, where she settled down. She hated herself for the longest time for abandoning the fight, and her friends, the ones that were still alive at least, and the man she was to marry. Honestly she never really stopped hating herself.  


-  


Shortly after arriving, she caught the eye of a muggle man with blonde hair that reminded her of Marlene and bright green eyes that reminded her of Lily. Their relationship moved quickly, they married after only a year together. She told him about magic, about the war and Hogwarts and the houses, but never about her own cowardice.  


She was twenty-one when she gave birth to their only child. Marlene had blonde curls and sparkling brown eyes. A week after she was born it was announced in the Daily Prophet that the war was over, Lily and James were dead. She scanned the list of casualties but her ex-fiancé wasn't there. At least not on the first day. She hadn't really loved him, no matter what she'd told herself, but she would still mourn when his murder was announced.  


Her husband died when Marley was five, in a muggle accident. Marley didn't understand what was going on, and wrapped her arms around her mother and told her it was all gonna be okay.  


-  


At the age of eight Marley's curls were an uncontrollable mess. She was a bright child, playing with the muggle children and never letting slip about magic. She was always on, running around the house and giggling down the street with her friends. She truly took after her namesake.  


When Marley was eleven the letter came, and it dawned on Mary that she'd have to go to Diagon Alley for the first time since she was nineteen. She took Marley down to the wizarding street and avoided eye contact with the people around her. On September 1st she stood down the end of the station waving off her daughter, a hat hiding her face from view.  


Mary got an owl from Marley saying she was sorted into Gryffindor and had made friends with a girl with red hair and a diary. She spoke of a girl with puffy red eyes like she'd been crying and curls even wilder than her own who was in the year above her, she'd sat with her on the train but had avoided her ever since.  


-  


Over the years Mary would regularly glance at the Daily Prophet only to see James Potter running around on the cover. At least, until he looked at the camera, then it was Lily staring back at her.  


She read about her daughter's first real friend and the Chamber of Secrets. She looked at the picture on the front page and saw a young girl, so remarkably similar to the pictures of Molly Prewett when she was younger that her brothers had kept in their pockets.  


She read about Sirius Black escaping, saw his crazed face on the cover, and had a hard time recognising this man as the boy who she'd watched at school and in the Order.  


That boy had been loud and brash and guarded and a flirt. That boy cared more about his hair than the family he'd been born to but not more than the one he'd chosen. That boy had fallen in love more times than Mary could count, but it almost never lasted. That boy had finally fallen in love one last time, with the boy with mousy hair and too many scars. Just a week later they graduated and were thrown into the middle of a war.  


The man in the picture was crazy, laughing silently at nothing, as if something inside of him had just snapped. The man in the picture was empty looking. The man in the picture had black hair that was a matted mess and he eerily resembled his cousin.  


-  


The Daily Prophet reported on You-Know-Who's second rising and Mary panicked. She immediately tried to get Marlene home, but she was 16 now, and more stubborn than even her namesake ever had been. Mary mustered up all her courage and made her way to Hogwarts. Almost immediately she ran into her old friend, three scars now ran down his face that hadn't been there before. After she gave her condolences for Sirius' death and met his wife Mary left with promises to catch up later.  


She hid in the shadows of the halls she hadn't been in since she was seventeen, not taking any chances, rusty from years of not using magic. It wasn't until after the battle was over, having reunited with a half-dozen or so ex-classmates, that she found her daughter, and the déjà vu felt like a stab in the gut. The blonde lay in the rubble, eyes open and unseeing, surrounded by classmates.  


She collapsed over her daughter, younger than even Mary herself had been during the first war, at only sixteen, and cried. Finally she straightened up and looked around, nearby she saw a man, no a boy, with a shock of red hair cried over an identical boy, and Mary was reminded of the Prewett twins bodies, and the sight of Molly crying over them.  


She walked into the great hall when they came to move Marley's body, she was immediately assaulted by the sight of so many friends of her past, injured or dead. She walked without really paying attention to her surroundings, and ran directly into her old professor.  


-  


"Professor McGonagall?"  


"Mary MacDonald? I thought you were dead."  


"Not dead, and it's actually Mary Driscoll now."  


"Driscoll? Oh, Marlene Driscoll, she..."  


"Yes, she is, w-well, she was..."  


-  


The old woman wrapped her arms around the woman as she sobbed into her chest.  


-  


_Mary MacDonald didn't care about being proud in that moment._


End file.
